Member Discussions

So, today, I finally gotten around to debugging my MUD's code when I tried to log on with my phone.
The reason I had to code special support to allow my phone to log on, is, there are no MUD clients (to my knowledge) that work with a Symbian Nokia... So, I'm left with Telnet. There wasn't a huge deal of work to actually make it compatible, I pretty much just had to clean my code up a bit.
So, now anyone with a Symbian or Windows mobile phone can connect..
But, why would I do such?
Well, "Snake XVIIIIIIII: The 4th dimention" is pretty much standard on any Nokia (and some others too), now they can access the internet, why not have MUD support too?
It's a heck of a lot more interesting than Snake, that's for sure.
Though, I'm interested to know: Would you consider programming your mud to be able to accept rather temperamental Telnet connections, to allow mobile support?

Would I consider it? Definitely. I don't know what all that entails, really, but it's certainly a good idea if you've got people wanting to connect to your mud on their phones.

Indeed, it could be a good 5 minutes of fun in a café, or similar.. (Infact, I have an hour long bus ride I have to take next week, I might just try it out then. Who knows, I may never need my computer again.)
Although, I think it would be much easier if there where a Simbian MUD client, as then it wouldn't have the god-awful problems Telnet tends to encounter.

This is going to be one of the first things that I am going to work on as soon as I get my android phone. (looking at the HTC dream right now)

I've been hoping for the last year or so that phones will actually be what revives muds.

I'm not sure if phones will be able to revive muds alone, I think we need to create a new way of thinking, and a new way of publishing, before we'll see any change in the "market".

That said, mobile phones should certainly be a part of the future of mudding.

I agree that there needs to be a new way of thinking. But I also think that phones and their text interface are a natural way of moving forward. I believe it will require rethinking player output (I'm already working on this) and will require native clients to make playing easier -- not simpler, but easier. The ability to type on a phone is limited (except perhaps for the BlackBerrys) and so the interface needs to be simplified.

The ability to type on a phone is limited

Well, most phones now have mini usb support..
And most keyboards are now usb..
Alone, that sounds crazy, but seriously, why not have phone keyboards (pocket sized... that you plug in)?

Now, crazy ideas aside.
My mud's going to be more social/RP orientated, so language is going to be a big factor, and it's difficult to talk, only using numbers, but if I had a Mud Client that just sent the text I put in, instead of trying to add escape sequences and \b's, then I think it'd be around 30% easier to use.. Making it.. Well, usable! ..If a bit slow, at first.

Well, Python runs on Symbian, so it shouldn't be hard to port an existing Python client ;)

Well I found a JVE telnet application for my Bold, and it holds the connection to my mud very effectively. I occasionaly lose the connection.

A couple of thoughts that I've had:
To get the proper line wrapping I've had to decrease the size of the telnet text, it strains the eyes to play too much, great for chatting though.

The telnet client I have doesn't do scrollback effectively, so it makes combat/chatting very ineffective.

Using ED on a crappy telnet client on a tiny blackberry is not a very effective way to program!

I imagine if you could find a decent Java based client, you could install it on most phones and it would solve a lot of these issues, but they wouldn't harness the power of the phone as effectively as a custom client.